Raleigh, NC—Android offers a compelling, fresh take on mobile applications. It blends the ubiquity of cell phones, the excitement of open source software, and the corporate backing of Google and other Open Handset Alliance members such as T-Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Intel, ARM, Sprint, Motorola, and NTT DoCoMo. Pragmatic Bookshelf's new book, Hello Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform ($32.95 USD), will get you started.

Author Ed Burnette says, "While there are many mobile platforms on the market, including Symbian, iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Linux Mobile, Android is special. It's the the first to combine portability across a wide range of hardware, a wide-open marketplace for applications, a high level of security and application isolation, a Linux-based architecture, and tons of built-in services such as GPS, SQLite, and embeddable Maps. The result is a mobile platform developers can't afford not to learn."

With Ed's new book, getting started with Android is easy. You don't even need access to an Android phone, just a computer where you can install the Android SDK and the phone emulator that comes with it. Within minutes, Hello, Android will get you creating your first working application: Android's version of "Hello, World."

From there, you'll build up a more substantial example: an Android Sudoku game. You'll learn about many aspects of Android programming, such as creating user interfaces (including touch, D-pad, and keyboard input), building location-based services (including GPS and cell-tower triangulation), and working with sensors (accelerometer, compass). You'll also see how to build in multimedia audio and video, add graphics using 2D and 3D OpenGL, network with web pages and web services, and store data with SQLite. You'll get a full overview of the Android application life cycle.

If you're a busy developer who'd rather be coding than reading about coding, this book is for you.

For a review copy or more information please email pragprogpr@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.

Ed Burnette is a professional developer and author
living in Cary, North Carolina.

About Pragmatic Bookshelf
Pragmatic Bookshelf is an imprint of the Pragmatic Programmers, LLC. Our titles are distributed to bookstores internationally by O'Reilly Media.

The Pragmatic Bookshelf features books written by developers for developers. The titles continue the well-known Pragmatic Programmer style, and continue to garner awards and rave reviews. As development gets more and more difficult, the Pragmatic Programmers will be there with more titles and products to help programmers stay on top of their game.

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